


with words meant just for you

by kiaronna



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Enchanted (2007) Fusion, Comedy, Crack Treated Seriously, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Humor, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Has Feelings, Inspired by Enchanted (2007), Jaskier is not actually a Disney Princess but he's pretty close, M/M, Pining, Single Parent Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:40:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23830984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiaronna/pseuds/kiaronna
Summary: There’s something in the mud, just off the road. Geralt would think it dead, but it’s still breathing, flexing its fingers woefully towards the path. Ciri taps at the too-soft fringe of the thing’s hair, the puff of his frumpy clothing. Geralt deftly moves her back. “Don’t know where it’s been.”“But look at him,” Ciri commands. “He’s dirty, and probably hungry. Geralt, can’t we help? We have plenty of coin.”The odd being raises its head. Below the scent of dirt and grime, he smells—delightful. Like—like fields of daisies. Like scented handkerchiefs, and wood well-treated with oil, and the rich, sweet earthiness of leather that hasn’t been splattered with blood a thousand times.That smell is a danger all its own, Geralt recognizes. And then the terrible thing opens up its mouth.“Hello, fellow travelers, my name is Jaskier. I seem to be a little lost. I decided to leave the Grand and Sparkling Castle in Andalasia. To go back to my forest friends, and my dear little cottage. Can you help?”In which Geralt must fight the most terrifying monster of all: an enchanting bard from another dimension.
Relationships: Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Jaskier | Dandelion, Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, previous Geralt z Rivii/Yennefer of Vengerburg
Comments: 41
Kudos: 154





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> yo, I don't usually go here, but a Witcher Enchanted AU seemed so unbearably amusing to me. I had to do it to em  
> I have only seen the television show, and desperately googled everything else. Heads-up: the order of Plot things got altered. figured this fandom could handle it *cough cough NONLINEAR NARRATIVE cough*

There’s _something_ in the mud, just off the road. Geralt would think it dead, but it’s still breathing, flexing its fingers woefully towards the path, like it’s begging.

Ciri reaches out to gently tap at the too-soft fringe of the thing’s hair, the puff of his frumpy clothing. Geralt deftly moves her back. Often, the deceptively welcoming can cloak the worst of threats. Geralt didn’t take in his child surprise, against his best judgment, to let her prod at every oddity until one revealed fangs.

“Don’t know where it’s been.”

“But _look_ at him,” Ciri commands. “He’s dirty, and probably hungry. Geralt, can’t we help? We have plenty of coin, after your last fight.”

Geralt gives her a look that communicates, _he could be dangerous_.

Ciri scoffs. “I could explode him with a scream, and you could probably snap him in half with your pinky.”

The odd being raises its head. Below the scent of dirt and grime, he smells— _delightful_. Like—like fucking fields of daisies. Like scented handkerchiefs, and wood well-treated with oil, and the rich, sweet earthiness of leather that hasn’t been splattered with blood a thousand times.

That smell is a danger all its own, Geralt recognizes. And then the terrible thing opens up its mouth.

“Hello!” He’s scrambling to his feet, and trying to dust himself off. Unfortunately, mud clings, so he just begins dripping. “Hello, fellow travelers, I—my name is Jaskier. I’m sorry to bother—“ _no you’re not,_ Geralt thinks “—it’s just that, that I seem to be a little lost.”

“Village is half a day’s walk south,” Geralt grunts.

“Oh!” The creature sways towards him. Geralt shoves Ciri behind him, and bares his teeth. The wretched thing _smiles_ , bright and guileless, the exact opposite response. “You know the way. You see, I’m just looking for my home. I decided to leave the Grand and Sparkling Castle, and its Esteemed Court in Andalasia. To go back to my forest friends, and my dear little cottage.”

“There aren’t cottages around here,” Ciri pipes up. The thing tilts at its high waist, puffy clothes yielding, to smile at her.

“Hello, little one. It’s wonderful to have run into friends to help me along my way.”

“Not friends, you loon,” Geralt grunts. Now the situation is clearer—this is not a threat. This is a madman.

Now the madman looks concerned. He’s clasping his hands together, in front of him, still dripping mud, looking—pathetic. Lost and mad and helpless. Hopeful, in the middle of a fucking forest ravaged by beasts. His eyes are robin’s-egg blue, standing out in the grime.

“Please,” he says, softly. His voice is almost melodic.

“Hey,” Ciri says, from his waist, and he groans like his soul’s about to depart his body.

“No,” he says firmly.

“ _Geralt_ ,” Ciri urges. She’s watched him help too many poor people with too little coin. Gods, parenthood is terrible. All these shit morals she expects him to display, constantly, especially when it’s least convenient. Even when her grandmother had been a sociopath, half the time—she has _expectations_ for Geralt. This, among a million other reasons, is why he didn't want to take her in, especially at ten. But it's been a few years, and she's alive, if maybe bearing a few scars. As usual, some of Geralt's life is firmly outside of his control. And any rationality.

“Fine,” he grunts. “Where, exactly, is this cottage?” He’s going to regret this, he can already tell.

The thing— _Jaskier_ —brightens. “Of course,” he says, “it’s right past the Waterfall of Wishes, on your way to the Fields of Fair Dreams.”

_So_ much regret.

“Fuck,” Geralt exhales, with feeling. Jaskier blinks at him.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he echoes back, as if _he doesn’t know the word_. “Fuck! Oh, that’s a fun sound, is that your name?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Ciri confirms with glee, before Geralt can stop her.

“Glorious Fuck,” Jaskier half-sings, “and his lovely little companion, my guides to home sweet home. Such fun, with his distinguished white hair, his brooding dark clothes, his—his two swords?” He gasps. “Oh! Oh, you didn’t say.”

“Say what?” Ciri asks.

“He’s a Hero,” Jaskier replies, practically whispering. “Who else would bear a sword? He’s a Glorious Hero, of old.”

“He’s pretty old,” she agrees.

“Glorious Hero Fuck,” Jaskier says, sticking out one grimy hand. “You honor me with your presence. Thank you for letting me accompany you on this adventure, if just for a time.”

Geralt lets all his air out, very slowly, through his nose. “ _Ciri_.”

“Come on,” she says, patting Roach’s flank. “If he’s still annoying in an hour, you can just push him into a different pile of mud.”

* * *

“May I know,” Jaskier asks, continuing to stare at Geralt like one might at a king on his throne, “what your great adventure is?”

Geralt takes jerky from his pack, and rips into it with his teeth.

In a crescendo, Jaskier continues: “What do you seek? Fortune? Fame? _Destiny_ —“

“No,” Geralt snaps. From atop Roach, his gangly, half-grown child of destiny smiles slyly down at him. He gives her a look that attempts to silently communicate, _give Roach a break, stretch your legs. Get down_. He is ignored.

Before he can voice the request, Jaskier is reaching up to help swing her to the ground. “Come smell the wildflowers!”

“I’ve seen wildflowers,” she mutters, scrunching her nose at him, but she does it without protest. Geralt takes the opportunity to check Roach’s girth, to rearrange their things.

“Well,” Jaskier says, after another mile, a flower crown for Ciri half-made in his hands. Ciri hands him a daisy from her makeshift bouquet, and he expertly weaves it in amongst the leaves and blooms. “If not fortune, fame, or destiny. May I ask what you seek?”

Ciri’s true answer is not one Geralt is ready to share. His not-quite-human, royal child surprise.

Instead, Geralt grunts: “creatures.”

“Creatures?” Jaskier repeats, a delighted question in his tone.

“Beings,” Ciri clarifies helpfully. “An alp. Kikimora.” She pauses. “…a werewolf?”

Jaskier grins. “I know that one. To be a werewolf,” he declares, dreamily. “They’re always so handsome!”

Ciri gives Geralt a look that says, _this man is disturbed. Maybe we should’ve left him in the mud_.

He may not have raised her, but he’s proud.

“For what majestic creature do we search?” Jaskier says. “A unicorn? Pegasi? This is so thrilling! What quests we seek—“

“A striga,” Geralt grunts. Several days of travel further.

“Ooh? Some kind of bird, perhaps? With feathers a rainbow—“

“Mutilated, cursed aberration of a woman,” Geralt corrects.

“…interesting,” Jaskier says. He recovers faster than Geralt expected. “We don’t have that, where I come from.”

“Not even past the edge of the Whimsical Daisy Forest?” Ciri asks, clearly too influenced by Yen’s brand of sarcasm. Even if they haven’t seen Yen in months, the sorceress disappeared off to some court or lavish estate of her own, he has to deal with her.

“No,” Jaskier sighs, completely genuine, “not even there.” Geralt may be immune to this, but Ciri instantly transforms from skeptic to awed.

“Tell me more of your land’s regions,” she demands, speeding up to walk by his side. Geralt tries to nudge Roach into slowing down more so he doesn’t have to listen, but Roach refuses.

It is going to be a very, very long day.

* * *

Thankfully, halfway through the afternoon, a giant centipede comes at them from the deep, damp woods. Jaskier shuts up just long enough for Geralt to dispatch it. (Geralt should’ve let the thing hunt him. Should’ve taken Ciri and Roach and continued down the forest path. It was smart enough to know he was the weak link.)

“Wow!” Jaskier gasps, clapping, like Geralt is in—in a fucking _ring_ with spectators. “Incredible! A great hero indeed! Was that a striga? You _saved my life!_ Oh ho, you won’t regret this.” (Geralt already does. Still, he’d hidden his face till his black eyes faded. He’d told himself it was for Ciri’s sake, not their companion’s.)

The respite is brief.

* * *

They make it to a suitable campsite by sunset. Jaskier has no useful information about where he’s going, where he’s actually coming from, or why. This is somehow less aggravating than the fact that he insists on humming and whistling whenever Geralt and Ciri aren’t talking. Geralt is almost never talking. Ciri quiets just for the sheer joy of watching Geralt’s already strained patience crumble further. Or, possibly, from his increasingly ridiculous tales.

The next morning, the nightmare begins again. This time, Geralt’s already done. This time, Geralt hadn’t closed his eyes once all night. Even lanky, floppy, seemingly friendly strangers can hurt a young sleeping girl.

“Jaskier,” Ciri says as they walk, “can I ask you a question?” to which he beams and says,

“Yes, Glorious Fuck’s child?”

Geralt’s patience does not crumble, instead swilling about thirty potions and mutating into something else entirely. Before he’s registered it, his sword is out, the blade pressed to that thin, pale neck.

“Geralt,” he says, easy and low. He’s managed to back the poor fool up into a tree.

“That’s his actual name,” Ciri adds from behind them, not sounding apologetic about it. Precious brat. Jaskier swallows. It is not the kind of swallowing Geralt is accustomed to, from those a Witcher has pinned.

“All right,” he says, eyeing the weapon, “while I’d normally love to get on a first name basis,” Geralt is getting the impression that wretched nickname is going to remain, forever, “and have some romantic tension at the tip of your literal blade, I have…” he pauses here, to give a dreamy sigh. “I have a True Love already.”

Sheathing his sword, Geralt steps back. “ _Do_ you?” Ciri asks, intrigued. Without a doubt, Jaskier the madman is one of the more interesting, if harmless, things they’ll find on their travels.

“Yes,” Jaskier says, nodding. One arm encased in a puffy shirt sleeve wraps about Geralt’s shoulders, who feels his lip curl. They begin walking, Jaskier spreading his other hand out before them, up into the sky. “Oh, Glorious Hero Geralt, if you’d seen her you would understand why we can never be!” Geralt grunts. “The loveliest of maidens in the Esteemed Court! Her voice sweet and somber as a nightingale! And—and _oh_ , she has the absolute biggest and softest of—“ Ciri, delighted, sways towards them, and Geralt bares his teeth at her “—eyes! Also, such a tender and passionate… heart within her breast!” He cuts a hand over his lips, lowers his voice. “Speaking of, those are pretty—“

“Who is she?” Ciri asks.

“The _Duchess_ ,” Jaskier breathes, on a reverent inhale. “Many a wonderful night we’ve spent together—erm, reading poetry and passionately professing our dearest emotion. Alas, I have bravely sallied forth to seek my fortunes before we, doubtlessly, elope off together.”

Geralt gives an eye roll that, strangely enough, the loon translates for what it is.

“You’re wondering how I make my coin! Well, let me show you. Behold!” From his pantaloons, somehow without pausing their steps, he pulls a muddy, sad-looking shape. Neither of them can really guess at what it is meant to be. “ _No!_ ” He gasps. “No no no no, this won’t do. Please, we have to find a—a clear, babbling brook! Maybe a reedy, slow-moving river.”

“ _No_ ,” Ciri protests immediately. The corner of Geralt’s mouth ticks up. Ten minutes later, they are beside an ugly, muddy stream. “Now we have to wait while he fishes,” she balefully informs Jaskier. Cheerfully, Jaskier rips off one of what is apparently many layers of his pantaloons, and dips it into the water. Throwing the net just so, Geralt can nick their unwanted traveling companion in the calf.

Although Jaskier squeaks and stumbles a little, he dutifully returns to swabbing his muddy treasure. While he does this, he hums some kind of—cleaning song. A _cleaning song_. Gods, Geralt wants to—to bind him up, and gag him, and fling him somewhere. Make him splutter and protest. It’s a very strange, pressing feeling. It is not a feeling he’s familiar with.

“It’ll be alright,” Jaskier tells Ciri, “once this is clean, we’ll have hours of entertainment!”

“It’s a game?” Ciri says, with cautious interest, and while they’re distracted Geralt finds peace in the swaying of the net, the clean smell of the forest. “Oh! You’re a musician.”

“Don’t be silly,” Jaskier answers her brightly. There is the terrifying, grating sound of a string being plucked. Just once. “I’m not a musician.” Geralt freezes. Clearly, he is undergoing karmic punishment for something. Renfri, perhaps, still. “I’m a bard!”

_Fuck_.

* * *

“When we stop for the night,” Geralt growls in explanation, after the fifth time Jaskier has given him the same weepy, shining look. When they stop for the night, and part ways in the village, the bard can have the cursed thing back. Geralt has heard one note. He doesn’t need to hear another.

Enough of his time has been wasted, sitting in pubs that stank of piss and pungent ferment that barely passed as ale. Listening to some waifish sod yowl about—about endowed, timid maidens and fearless, scarless heroes, and righteous kings. In all his travels, Geralt’s never met a person matching any of their descriptions.

Those songs are fairytale. Worse than that, even. They’re propaganda, making his work harder. Handsome, nameless figures inspiring common men into foolishness. Why hire a Witcher, when you could become a hero yourself, taking on a monster? Why give your hard-earned coin to a man barely better than the monster you’re hiring him to fight?

“No instrument,” Jaskier bemoans, “no homey cottage.”

Oh, they’re _all_ aware that Jaskier hasn’t found his cottage yet. Geralt doubts it exists outside of Jaskier’s addled mind. That, and any of the locations he’s mentioned in their shared travels. He’s beginning to suspect the last poor souls saddled with Jaskier shoved him face-first in that ditch and took off, fast as they could, while he continued to blather on about _fantastical quests_ into the mud.

Unfortunately, Ciri, who previously lived with increasingly desperate and horrible people (and also Geralt’s gruffness), is enchanted. His cheer, his openness, his sincere grandeur. Perhaps the fact that she scooped him off the side of the road, like a ragged, stumbling, half-blind kitten. Madmen are pleasant to be around, for children. Geralt needs to separate them as quickly as possible, before Ciri forms a true attachment.

One meal at the inn’s pub, and they’ll part ways.

* * *

Geralt would be willing to give any coin to fill up that—that _ceaseless_ mouth. Just. To _fill_ it. To make it stop. Gods.

But when the barkeep looks at them, expectantly, over plates, Jaskier beams and pulls a solid gold coin out of his bag.

“How much do I owe you?” He asks, like maybe the gold won’t cover all their meals.

Not just a madman, then. A _rich_ madman. That’s how he’s survived.

“You’re going to get us robbed,” Ciri mutters to him, half-concerned. At least she’s learned something, on the road with him. Geralt doesn’t like that she’s also learned to call the three of them _us_. At least she no longer assumes it’s easy for Geralt to fend off bandits and muggers. It isn’t difficult, but Geralt would rather spend some time at rest or without attracting attention.

The barkeep takes their gold, and even easily lets them remain at the bar, despite Geralt’s presence. Some of them would prefer he move to the corner, even if they’d never dare say it aloud.

“Oh, no,” Jaskier assures her, “I’m not rich. Or taking people’s taxes unfairly! No well-meaning rogue would be interested in my purse.”

The look she gives him is dubious, but it relaxes into a smile when he grins at her, well-meaning and bright. He taps her nose, and spins his mug around on the bartop, and is much too enthusiastic.

Even madmen realize, though, when no one will enter a 10-foot circle about them.

“They’re intimidated by our handsome visages,” Jaskier whispers to Geralt. One of Geralt’s two ‘handsome visages’ is indeed clearly visible from within its sheath at his hip. Geralt keeps waiting for it to dawn, the realization that he’s keeping company with a Witcher. Possibly he’s been blinded by dirt, his lack of brains, and the presence of what mostly appears to be a harmless child—but still. A Witcher is a Witcher. “Maybe if you smiled a little?” Jaskier prompts, and Ciri _laughs_.

“They’re scared of him,” Ciri explains. “But not for his fearsome scowl.”

Jaskier blinks. “Are… are they monsters? Are they villains to his hero?”

Ciri doesn’t answer. To fill it in, Geralt simply says, “I’m a Witcher,” and waits.

The realization doesn’t come. “I know a few witches,” Jaskier says. “Very intelligent, smart girls. Ready to help brew up love potions, or make you magic shoes—“ Ciri shoots Geralt that look again, his girl, and Jaskier, for the first time, stops talking. “This is like the alp,” he realizes. “The striga. You’re something I haven’t heard of!”

Ciri tilts her head at him. “Really,” she hums. “They’re—they’re monster hunters. Everyone’s heard of them.”

“Not me,” Jaskier says simply, straightening, and turns those blue eyes onto Geralt. “But it sounds enough like a hero with adventures. Adventures to save the kingdom from its fears!”

_No_ , Geralt wants to say. _Not like that at all_.

He doesn’t say it.

“You make it sound like a walk through a sunny meadow,” Geralt tells him. “It’s not.”

Jaskier, rather than continuing to blabber, quietly surveys the empty circle around them again.

“I get it now,” Jaskier says, which means he probably doesn’t get anything at all. “You’re a _Tragically Misunderstood_ Hero. I’d pegged you all wrong. And normally, I’m terribly good at pegging.”

Geralt eyes him sidelong, curls up his lip, and can only grunt in disapproval. “No.”

“ _Yes,_ ” Jaskier informs him, grabbing Ciri’s hands between his. “Ciri, do you not find him lovable and inspiring?”

He deserves to be _staked_. Ciri, though, just replies, softly, “yes?”

Hmm. She’s never said that before. Geralt’s never even tried to imagine her seeing him as—as something _good_. Not just something Destiny threw her at as some kind of joke. Just a child, thrown about by her beloved Queen grandmother, who finally bowed to the whims of Destiny—and also Yen’s fury—when Ciri turned ten. _The child surprise is his, and you’ll all bring ruin on yourselves by keeping her in Cintra. Take her now._

Ciri had lost her grandmother, her family. Lost a castle and servants and velvet drapes, and gained looting carcasses and sleeping on rocks. Resentment towards him was safe to assume. Resentment isn't what gently lights her eyes now.

“See?” Jaskier says.

“Not really,” Ciri admits, blinking.

“No, no!” Jaskier insists, bouncing up and down on his barstool, taking his hands back to wave them through the air emphatically in Geralt’s direction. “Look, it’s just that they don’t know you. I’m sure if they knew you, and all of the great things you’ve doubtlessly done, they’d like you just fine.”

“Hmph,” Geralt grunts.

“Have you _seen_ Geralt?” Ciri asks. “He speaks to order a specific beer at the pub, or to describe a monster. I haven’t even heard all his adventures! Geralt, tell me the one with the alp.”

“Stabbed it with silver,” Geralt states. To demonstrate, he spears a bite of rabbit with his knife. The plate practically cracks.

Ciri crosses her arms, and looks to Jaskier. “Does that inspire you to love him?”

Jaskier raises his arms, smiles with an enthusiasm it doesn’t deserve. “Never hurts to try, you know! Besides, he saved my life. He’s a True Hero.”

That emphasis earns him a snickering smile. “Okay. Well, I’ll just be here watching your elocution lessons. I used to have these with my grandmother. I’m looking forward to hearing Geralt practice his tongue twisters.”

“Elocution lessons?” Jaskier turns, begins to fiddle with his pack. “Little cub, there’s only one solution I know of for a stalwart, if admittedly extremely stoic, True Hero to get praise.”

Levering himself up by the shoddy crate that’s serving as a barstool, he hops up upon a grimy table. Raises what they can both now see is a beloved, decorated lute. He gives a single strum.

“What is he doing,” Ciri whispers, eyes practically sparkling. Geralt gives a growling sigh. “He’s going to get eaten alive by the patrons.”

“Let him,” Geralt snorts. “At least then we’ll actually have entertainment.”

The strumming becomes melodic. There’s at least three rough and rowdy barmen looking their way, including the owner of the pub. And Jaskier opens his mouth.

“ _When a humble bard, graced a ride along, with Geralt of Rivia,_ ” comes the song. It’s enchanting. Bewitching. The men are gathering, but it doesn’t seem to be to cut Jaskier up into pieces and swallow him as a snack. “ _Along came this song. When the white wolf fought_ ,” he continues. More and more people are surrounding him. Heads bobbing, some beginning a slow stomp, until it crests. Until Jaskier is singing, “ _toss a coin to your witcher, o valley of plenty—_ “

And the entirety of the gathered men begin to sing along.

“ _O valley of plenty, o valley of plenty--!_ ”

Some of them are—dancing. They’re dancing. Merrymaking, with Jaskier at the center of it all.

“What the _fuck_ ,” Geralt spits.

“I don’t know this song,” Ciri laughs, breathless, clapping along, “how do they all know this song about you—“

“He’s a fucking— _fae_ ,” Geralt snarls, which he knows isn’t right. Ciri seems to know it too—she raises one pale eyebrow. He grabs her clapping hands and stills them anyway. Unfortunately, the barkeep whirls by, snagging her now free hands and pulling her into a jig.

“Hey, this is fun,” Ciri calls. “Geralt, join in!”

“Stop _dancing_ ,” Geralt roars. Danger hiding in deceptive packages, as predicted. Who knows what lies at the end of these two dance lines? Who knows what dastardly moves of death can come out of slapping knees and rusty tambourines?

He’d let his guard down for a fool, and look where it had gotten him.

In the center of the pub floor, Jaskier is being lifted, in a disturbingly coordinated and syncopated effort, by several local thugs. Geralt’s never even heard of a monster like this before; no tales passed down by other Witchers, no rumors on the wind. That can only mean one thing.

No one survives to tell of this monster.

He shatters a window, and half-tosses a protesting Ciri out it. Then, he reaches for his pack and his potions. Just a few swills, and he’s ready to face it down. Strangely, no men lie dead yet. Even the alcohol-poisoned drunkard they’d passed on the way in is up, dancing on his feet.

He draws his swords, and turns to face what is masquerading as a bard.

The music abruptly stops. The dancing, too.

“Oh!” Jaskier takes in a little gasp. “Geralt, are you—are you feeling alright?”

He hops down from his cradle of hands. Everyone just looks dazed, even though they still smile.

“Hey, hey,” Jaskier says, and of course, he’s pushing at the barkeep’s shoulder lightly. Predictably, a mind-altering monster would sic its victims on him first. “Will you get a drink of water for my friend?”

Strangely, he does. Jaskier slings his lute over his shoulder, and comes for him. Without the others. Geralt has no idea why, but he doesn’t stab the monster clean through.

Jaskier frowns up at him. “Your eyes look _awful_. Does that hurt?”

_This will hurt_ , Geralt thinks fiercely, bracing his better sword arm to swing, and then—he’s singing something else.

Geralt had been too slow. He can feel the song, eating away at his insides, thinks— _Ciri_ —

“There,” Jaskier says, decisively. “Now isn’t that better?”

The giant centipede had gored him yesterday, just a scrape, in his side. A week past, a chunk of his knee had been taken by a Drowner. For some strange reason, Geralt can’t feel either ache. Just a cozy bubbling—like foamy ale. A warm bath.

“What,” Geralt snarls, “did you _do_? Why do I feel—“

Good. He feels good.

“Yes, you’re welcome, you lug,” Jaskier beams, hearing the end of the sentence that never came, then to the barkeep, “do all your rooms have a bath?”

Maybe the bloody fake bard can succumb to drowning. Maybe his music doesn’t work underwater. Unless he’s something of a siren, and then—then maybe _that’s exactly what it wants_. Death by bath. At the very least, Geralt can rest in the fact that—

“Why is Ciri standing outside that broken window with Roach?”

If they survive this, they’re going to have a talk about what _leave me and run_ means.

* * *

“Oh, so you’re going to have a nice, warm, soothing bath clothed in all your leather?” Jaskier scolds, after it’s tried to leave Geralt defenseless several times. Geralt knows better than to give up his weapons. However, Jaskier refuses to be shoved off.

Sorceresses can have healing capabilities, right alongside their more unspeakable skills. It’s not the magic itself that throws him. Still, Geralt’s never met a monster so eager to convince him it’s completely harmless. Or at least, not one that does it so _well_. It’s prattling on like nothing’s amiss, like choreographed musical numbers in bars with strangers are a daily occurrence. Worst of all, Ciri has clearly fallen under its charm. They’d left her tucked up in bed next door without a care in the world.

“He _healed_ you,” Ciri reminded him, as they had exited the room.

And Geralt thinks about that. Considers it, sitting there in his stubborn grime, wide awake, watching as the thing rolls over in bed, snuffling. Somehow, his hair remains perfect and floppy and soft. Over the smell of his own sweat, of Roach, of the cling of Ciri’s bright airy scent, there is still the impenetrable meadow of daisies. Of earthy woods, and starlit nights.

Geralt is well aware that being _inhuman_ does not necessarily mean _dangerous_ , or _evil_.

The men of this town are crushed under the boot of their rulers, the weight of their vices, and the beast he’s going to slay tomorrow to earn his gold. Jaskier made them sing, and dance. Jaskier made them _smile_. When the giant centipede had come from the woods, Jaskier had stumbled in front of Ciri, a puffy arm outstretched. Useless. Foolish. Not evil.

Sometimes _inhuman_ just means _vulnerable. Hunted. Precious and rare._

Geralt gets out his mortar and pestle, and settles in for the night.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Geralt makes a realization, Yen makes an appearance, and Jaskier has to make a choice. Ciri just loves her new emotional support bard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all this was supposed to be a one-shot. It's now 16k and long chapters are... long... so it's a 3 parter now  
> *backs away throwing confetti*  
> SORRY  
> ALSO THE RATING CHANGED but IT'S PRETTY MUCH JUST REFERENCES WHOOP

Word comes that another Witcher has taken up the call for what Geralt suspects is a striga, so they detour. Pick up a few easy kills, enough to line his purse and their stomachs. At some point, Ciri decides it is her mission to help Jaskier through his confusion. Crouching, she draws him maps in the dirt at night. Points out borders and allegiances and hazardous regions, marking them in twigs and underbrush and different colors of leaves.

In return, Jaskier just crosses out all the lines. “Andalasia,” he declares proudly.

“There’d be rebellions,” Ciri frowns. “Unless…it’s a very strong empire? Do they not let anyone fight?”

“Why would people fight the monarchy?” Jaskier asks, as though monarchies have not been oppressing their people for thousands of years. “King Edward is very handsome. And just. And strong. And…” He sighs.

“What,” Ciri demands, blinking.

“He’s _very_ handsome.”

“Oh.” Ciri pauses. Assesses. “I thought you liked the Duchess?”

Jaskier doesn’t skip a beat, though he does wink. “As much as they say it, True Love doesn’t actually make you blind, Ciri.”

And because Ciri is a terrible child, she looks directly at Geralt and says, “does the king have long hair? How old is he?”

“Why,” Jaskier says, before Geralt grabs the unburnt end of a branch and uses it to set the twig-and-leaves Andalasia model ablaze.

“Less talking, more bedding down for the night.”

“It kind of looks like a heart,” Ciri says, sufficiently distracted, and Jaskier smiles, because the fool did it on purpose.

“A heart for my Duchess. Oh, I’m so happy you’ve brought her up, I was just thinking of how fetching she’d look in the firelight on that log—“

“Your pantaloons are on fire!” Ciri shrieks.

“I’m not _lying_ ,“ Jaskier protests, sounding oddly strained.

Because he is the only capable adult, Geralt takes the opportunity to grab Roach’s saddle blanket and beat down the flames.

Ciri creeps to his bedroll, that night, puts a small hand to his shoulder.

“Do you think it’s helping?” She whispers. Geralt doesn’t know why she bothers. Jaskier sleeps with blissful ease, as you might expect of a man who’d never heard the word _incubus_ or _succubus_ before last week. Geralt doesn’t know if it’s helping.

“You’re trying,” he tells her, “but this isn’t in your control, Ciri.”

She already knows she’s right to try.

* * *

They’re ready to turn around and seek work in another area entirely, but then comes word through the rumor mill that the Witcher hired to kill the striga had taken the money and run.

Geralt hadn’t known much of him. But despite rumors of their heartlessness, few Witchers already paid coin would abandon a village to a striga’s nonexistent mercy. So he packs up Roach, cuts Ciri’s swords lesson short, and they head out. It has nothing, Geralt reminds himself, to do with staying close to where they first found Jaskier.

If Jaskier finds whatever mirage of a cottage he’s looking for—or someone he knows... Despite Geralt’s best attempts, Jaskier hasn’t shown any desire to escape them yet, but maybe he lacked opportunity. He should have the opportunity.

Surveying the area is a lot more difficult when he has not one, but essentially two riled-up children parading around behind him. Finally, Geralt settles them into an inn. Then he attempts to continue the hunt himself.

For a man who can’t sneak or track or find the way to his own homestead, Jaskier is an expert at popping up in the middle of Geralt’s fights.

“Just here for, you know, moral support!” He calls. “Inspire me!”

He’d roll his eyes, but Geralt can’t take them off the beast.

Geralt was ready to kill the striga, like it had killed so many of the villagers, right up until the point where it started singing out its tragic life story in the voice of a breathy child. The discordant, almost chilling difference between its hulking, monstrous form and the innocence in its song has him gritting his teeth, bleeding out. Has him ready to spend a night wrestling a striga away from its crypt—and away from Jaskier.

Jaskier, who’s strumming his lute and looking towards the striga with quiet, gentle pity. If he can look at a striga like that, maybe it makes sense that his brain is similarly muddled about its reaction towards Witchers. He still flails and trips over himself in hasty exit, when the striga’s song ends. That voice melds beautifully, straight into a scream, as it begins to run.

“Geralt, Geralt, _Geralt_ —“

This is why Geralt told him to stay with Ciri in the inn. Jaskier has proven to have poor hearing to go with his poor judgment. He manages to distract the beast long enough for Jaskier to stumble away.

“I believe in youuuu,” Jaskier calls from outside the crypt.

“I’ll _kill_ you,” Geralt snarls into the striga’s gaping maw, but honestly, he’s talking to his bard. The striga—the striga gets to live.

* * *

“So the king was her father?” Jaskier says, when Geralt is bathing the entirety of the night from his skin.

“Did the sound of her ripping through my shoulder make it hard to hear her song’s second verse?” Geralt grunts. He flexes his sore fingers, rolls back in the steam.

“A little,” Jaskier acknowledges easily. “I don’t understand why you won’t let me heal it.”

Geralt closes his eyes, and pretends like he didn’t hear him.

Jaskier dropped into their life as a muddy, sparkling, floral heap. Something’s wrong with his head—who knows when he’ll remember his actual life, instead of this fiction he’s invented. Despite what he’s learned on their travels, he still has no qualms about traveling with a Witcher. Not even, apparently, about sprinkling bath salts and dried chamomile petals into said Witcher’s bath water.

Jaskier could disappear as easily as he came. Like a musical fever dream. Geralt relies only on his blades, his body, his wit, the heft of his purse, his prickly wildfire friendship with Yen, and on Ciri’s well-intended disobedience. Relying on the bard? Foolish.

Jaskier makes Geralt want to be foolish.

“Can I?” Jaskier murmurs, crouching at the lip of the tub. “Let me. As your friend.”

“We’re not friends,” Geralt tells him. Still—it’s wasteful, to not use Jaskier. Some pragmatic part of him is insisting on this.

“Do you have such high standards for friendship?”

“Hmm.” Geralt has no standards for friendship. He can’t. That’s the entire problem. Yen is a lucky accident that can mostly be attributed to Yen. Ciri is practically a captive. Geralt forgets, with his limited sleep and slightly lulled state, that Jaskier is uncannily good at reading him.

“There are a great many things that your lands possess and mine don’t,” Jaskier tells him, quietly and a little nonsensically. “But loneliness. That, we… our lands, I mean, of course… share.”

Geralt opens his eyes. “If you heard the talk of the people in this land, you’d know. Witchers aren’t like regular men.”

Jaskier nods, tosses another handful of bath salts in. “I could tell.” There it is. Perhaps he’s finally begun to realize— “You haven’t sung _once_. No wonder you’re so cranky.”

Like a duet or a ditty could improve a day. Regardless of creatures stabbed or bones broken.

“Hm,” Geralt grunts.

“Hmmm,” Jaskier hums back, higher, drawing it out. “Small steps, it’s okay, we’ll get there eventually.”

“I’m tone deaf,” Geralt tells him, just to quiet him. This isn’t true—in fact, the mutations to his hearing have given Geralt perfect pitch— but Jaskier doesn’t need to know that.

Miraculously, it silences him. Jaskier is gazing at him with a tragic sorrow, like Geralt is bleeding out in his arms, with mere moments to live. With grave seriousness and wet eyes, he murmurs, “does Ciri know?”

This reminds him—Ciri’s tucked into a canopy bed, a wall away, and as far as she’s concerned, he saved a normal-looking princess last night. Coddling her won’t do her any favors, so in the light of day tomorrow, he’ll tell her the entirety of the striga’s tale. And Jaskier’s worried she’ll find out he’s _tone deaf_.

“I’ll tell her when she’s older,” Geralt grunts, sinking into the bathwater.

“I’m _so sorry_ ,” Jaskier whispers. And then, blissfully, he goes quiet. Music is everything to him. Geralt can’t empathize, but he understands. He makes himself promise he’ll Jaskier the truth at some point.

Ciri is soundly asleep, and their bellies are stuffed with good drink and decadent food from the castle. They’re all well fed, a good deal richer. The bard’s a lunge away, quiet, and _safe_. Muscles loosening, Geralt lets himself float in the warmth of the bath, the clean aroma.

 _Squeak._ A pause. _Squeak squeak_. Soft breaths at his side. Three minutes. That’s all Geralt can get, these days.

“I can hear you, Jaskier.”

“Just a _smattering_ of healing, you won’t even—“

As a warning, Geralt reaches up to lightly smack him, and Jaskier scrambles to dodge, but neither of them had accounted for a tiny detail: the floor is slippery.

“Oh,” Jaskier says. From midair.

Then the tub is cramped, and there’s heavy, wet fabric draped over Geralt’s eyes. Someone coughing, splashing, breaking into breathless laughter.

“ _Jaskier_.”

“Sorry!” He laughs again, tries to lever himself up by Geralt’s good shoulder, but only succeeding in pushing the length of his body downwards in the tub, an awkward slide between them. Geralt’s going to drown him. “Sorry, sorry—wow, you are. Um. Naked. Very naked.”

With all his rambling about true love, Jaskier probably thinks lust just describes what he feels towards a particularly flowery poem. Nothing that could happen in a tub. It takes a few tries to remind himself of this.

“It’s a bath.” Shoving, Geralt manages to relocate him in all his soaked livery to the other end of the tub. “Can I not even have that, Jaskier? A moment of peace?”

“You’re a hero,” Jaskier disagrees breathily. He settles against the opposite rim of the tub, like he’s happy to still be there. Their legs are tangled beneath the now overflowing bathwater. Jaskier looks off, very pointedly, away from Geralt. “They don’t like those. Most find peace… boring.”

“I’m a Witcher,” Geralt corrects, “and I didn’t choose this.”

Jaskier’s brow descends, confusion flickering. Now, they make eye contact. “…no?”

Few people get to make choices of that magnitude, in their life. Geralt made the best out of the choices made for him.

He has a choice now. His choice is to reach over, and grasp Jaskier by the sad, soggy puff of his sleeve. Then, he pushes the entirety of his head beneath the petal-dotted water. The flailing, at least, gives Geralt’s heart some peace. By the time Jaskier pops up, spluttering and gasping indignantly, Geralt has gotten out, is standing beside the tub.

“Not everyone is your friend.”

There’s water dripping down Jaskier’s face, threatening to wash away the frozen smile that’s still hanging on there. A petal, stuck in his wet hair, comes loose and floats down to the bathwater.

“I know,” Jaskier says. He’s still smiling. “But I hope you’ll be. You’re amazing, Geralt.”

 _He doesn’t know what he’s in for,_ Geralt reminds himself. The urge to drown Jaskier in—in _something_ —is still strong.

“Can you guarantee you won’t fuck up my shoulder?” He says, instead of _your interest will pass_. This makes sense. Everyone is at least interested in Witchers, for their novelty and gory glamour. Admittedly, they usually don’t _stay_ interested once they’ve watched him spill monster guts directly into his face.

“I will take the greatest of care with your mighty shoulder,” Jaskier says, with a flick of his hand. Droplets speckle across the surface, little ripples spreading out. “And anything else you trust me with, too.”

Instead of dunking him again, Geralt begins to dress.

“Someday we’ll find your imaginary hovel,” he says.

“ _Cottage_ ,” Jaskier huffs.

“Or your Duchess,” Geralt continues, ignoring him. “Until then, you earn your keep.”

Jaskier’s eyes practically go luminous, a smile breaking over his face as he splashes, rolling, to get out of the tub. In battle, Geralt can move faster than almost any beast. Somehow, all his body does is stand, uselessly, as Jaskier wraps two arms around him, cuddles in against his chest.

“This will be such excitement,” he says. _Drip drip drip_ , sounds the cobblestones beneath him and his wet pantaloons. “Oh, you won’t regret this!”

Geralt’s entire front is soaked. Somehow, despite the damp, Jaskier is so warm. “Hm,” he grunts.

 _I already do_.

* * *

Despite what actually happens during their travels, their lives are fairly routine. Kill a beast. Reap the rewards. Settle in at a pub and watch Ciri learn to cheat at Gwent. Lay out beneath the stars. Care for Roach. Drink. Rest. Repeat.

For all his oddities, Jaskier slots easily in. When Geralt returns from hunting their campfire is already crackling merrily, with fresh herbs picked for seasoning. He sings, and muses, and chats with Ciri into the night until Geralt flashes his golden eyes at them to go to bed. After Geralt teaches him, he becomes frighteningly adept at cleaning Geralt’s tools and leather.

“I like cleaning,” Jaskier says brightly.

“No one likes cleaning,” Ciri says with narrow eyes. “That’s why you have to hire an entire army of people to clean a castle.”

“Well,” Jaskier says, “listen,” with an intake of breath that Geralt recognizes with the same wariness as a sword sliding out of its sheath. A hand laid over Jaskier’s mouth is all it takes. “Mmmmmm,” Jaskier muffles, musically. If they weren’t on an exposed strip of road, Geralt would let him. Geralt almost always lets him, now.

“Don’t discourage him,” Geralt says, “unless you’d prefer to do the cleaning.”

“Jaskier, I support you,” Ciri nods then. Geralt suspects she’ll never take to cleaning, besides what is strictly necessary. Jaskier begins the difficult task of prying Geralt’s fingers from his lips, one by one, before he can reply.

After each encounter with danger, Jaskier takes those fingers and pulls him aside.

“That claw looked nasty,” or “you dropped thirty feet!” or “your eyes,” he’ll always say briskly. Then, just as crisply and carefully, he’ll touch Geralt all over. Like the most delicate of instruments. Like Geralt’s made of the thinnest strings, that sing at the slightest brush.

Geralt isn’t touched often. Or gently. So this is probably true. Maybe it’s music that Jaskier can hear, because he keeps doing it.

When it’s appropriate, Ciri enters the fray. The first time—only after Geralt supervises the bandaging of her wounds—Jaskier goes straight to her. Unlike during her training, Geralt lets him. Jaskier smiles, sings smoky and low. His hands stay light and comforting on her shoulders.

The entirety of his palm blooms over the bruise on Geralt’s thigh, when Jaskier hums the blue back into his veins. His hand blooms. It lingers.

“Here,” Geralt grunts, placing the calloused fingertips at the gash on his forearm next. “Focus, Jaskier.”

“Oh, do you have somewhere to be?” Jaskier asks, just serenely enough that Geralt’s almost convinced he’s not—“other magical healing appointments to keep out here in the woods?” There it is. He supposes it was too much to ask, to expose Jaskier to both him and Ciri for so long and expect him to retain his sweetness.

“If we’re back on the road before midday,” Geralt says, “we’ll sleep in real beds tomorrow.”

Absently, Jaskier smooths a finger over newly knitted skin, and says, “can we have fish tonight?”

They smoke it, wrapped up in yellow leaves as wide as Geralt’s palm. Laughing, Ciri and Jaskier roll up their pants and wiggle their bare toes in the stream, splashing until the sun sets over the clearing in the west. The crickets and cicadas awaken. The wind settles to a breeze. Then Geralt has to haul Ciri back in for potions training, and Jaskier’s supposed to be watching the fire, but he gets absorbed in composing instead.

When Jaskier composes you can hardly tell—the only sign being that he stops, every few minutes, to scribble on parchment. That, and the lack of the magical magnetism that seems to make others sing or dance. Every pluck and hummed note is certain. Certain, but not compelling.

Geralt cannot tell why, precisely, Jaskier feels the need to compose. Especially when it’s clear he could perform any song for the first time in history and still have both accompaniment and a full-scale dance production, if he desired it.

“It’s different,” Jaskier says, with a little shrug, when Ciri voices the question. “Though I didn’t do this much, before I came here. I like it. It’s,” he waggles his quill at her, “it’s careful, and conscientious, a construction. It preserves a moment in time.”

The night’s warm. Jaskier’s unbuttoned his shirt halfway down his chest. The lute strap rests on his skin. His pants are still cuffed, firelight curling over his bare ankles and into every crook of him. At Geralt’s side Ciri grinds her pestle, the herbs bursting fragrant in the air, and when she hums thoughtlessly, Jaskier harmonizes in answer. She smiles and focuses when Geralt corrects her on quantity. At dinner he sits on the log beside Geralt, knocking their knees together while they trade sips of wine from Jaskier’s flask, and he only snorts it out his nose once, when Geralt and Ciri exchange a wry comment about merchants. Before Jaskier slips off to his own bedroll, he brushes his hand over the shoulder he healed. Squeezes. How long ago was that, now? Months? It’s been months. “Goodnight, Geralt.”

Geralt closes his eyes, and breathes it all in deep. Campfire smoke. Tender, slow roasted fish. Ciri. Roach. Endless daisy fields, and clear fresh spring water, the oil Jaskier uses to maintain his lute. _Home_ , on the road. Smell is the strongest, for memory. To preserve a moment in time.

They sleep.

* * *

Weeks later, they run into unanticipated trouble.

From beside Roach, the bard teaches Ciri scales, and a few chords on the lute. Geralt should be teaching her tracking, but this is important too. Other Witchers may not understand why. But—in Cintra, Ciri had a famed master musician at her disposal. For however long she chose. Honestly, Geralt’s fairly certain she avoided the lessons and spent more time on pranks than practice. Yet for Jaskier, she stands at rapt attention. For Jaskier, she’ll do almost anything, even reminders of the royalty that was wrested from her. That’s worth something, Geralt thinks. Worth waiting until tomorrow, to lecture on footprints and trails.

Then Roach stops, at the same moment as him.

“What,” Ciri says, and Jaskier, confused, hums,

“No, no, that chord was right—“

“Quiet,” Geralt commands, firm but not unkind, and Jaskier goes still.

The sun’s licking at the horizon. Geralt had hoped to camp in another hour or so—he can see in the dark, and Jaskier is half useless at makeshift tents anyway. They’ve been coming closer to the river, as the forest thickens on the other side, but there’s never been a problem in this area before—

He smells them, before he sees them. Gods, how he hates the things.

“They’re in the water,” he informs his companions. “There’s too many.”

“Are you going to explain—“

“No time.” Geralt grips Ciri’s elbows. “We’ve discussed this. Go.”

“I’ll protect him,” Ciri promises, then, serious and low.

“You’ll protect yourself,” Geralt corrects, even though his heart swells with relief. Ciri is trained. Most of the creatures will be focused on him; between her skills and the bard’s luck, they’ll make it.

Jaskier looks ready to speak again; Geralt drops his hands from Ciri’s elbows to her waist, lifts her.

“Take Ciri,” Geralt orders, shoving her on Roach, and the reins into Jaskier’s calloused hands. “ _Go_.”

“We can help,” Ciri seethes, and Geralt gives her a look so fiercely dark that even she looks uncertain beneath the severity of it.

“Come on, come on,” Jaskier urges. He sounds painfully bright. Faked, almost. “Geralt’s a True Hero, surely whatever’s in the water is no match for his pectora— _oh geez that is a lot of fish people_.”

“ _Go_ ,” Geralt hisses, and slaps Roach’s flank. Then, he turns to face the oncoming waves of the drowned dead.

He’s fought nastier, in poorer conditions, with worse injuries. Though the sheer number of them—that, he’s not used to. That, or wondering whether Ciri and Jaskier have enough common sense between them to ride _away_ from the banks of the river.

So he’s stupid, he’s sentimental. He’s slow. He’s everything a Witcher shouldn’t be, and when they attempt to poison him with cadaverine, it works better than it should. They’re piling, enveloping him, dragging him in the direction of the body of water. Once they touch the river, it’s over. He knows this, so he gets wilder, accepts that he is probably going to lose some body part as a trade for his continued life. That’s easy to accept—he’s not going mad with the knowledge. He has to convince himself of this, because he hears the first strains of music.

He drives a blade into the nearest drowned dead, and when it falls, he sees Jaskier, in a too-convenient patch of moonlight, fingers dancing over the strings of his lute.

“ _Fucking go_!” He roars, which really means, _I told you to take Ciri and yourself away from here_. _Why do you never listen to me, and always involve yourself? Why can’t you accept that I want to protect you?_ But the lute doesn’t stop.

In fact, to make it worse, Jaskier begins to sing.

“ _The seaweed is always greener_ ,” he belts bravely, “ _in somebody else’s lake_.”

Damn it all, Geralt is willing to give up a limb, but it’s cruel to expect him to do it to a song with these lyrics.

Stabbing another drowned dead, he resigns himself to his fate.

Except when he pulls the blade out, he realizes those fish lips are—moving? In its last gasping, blubbering breath it warbles, “ _you dream about going up there—“_

And the drowned dead around him chorus, with Jaskier as their lead, “ _but that is a big mistake!_ ”

“What the _fuck_ ,” is all Geralt can say, when one of the drowned dead dances. It fucking— _shimmies_. Waves its fins.

“ _Just look at the world around you_ ,” Jaskier sings coaxingly, “ _right here on the ocean floor…”_

The former pit of drowned dead is now in neat lines around him, kicking and dancing, arms on each others’ shoulders. Jaskier comes down the ugly aisle they make, strumming and singing, wiggling his shoulders as he travels. When he reaches Geralt, he doesn’t stop, just hooks his arm through Geralt’s on a downbeat and keeps going. They begin to back up, away from the river, and the drowned dead conga towards its banks.

“ _Under the sea_!” Jaskier sings, angelic.

“ _Under the sea_!” They blubber back at him.

“ _Darling it’s better, down where it’s wetter_ ,” Jaskier winks at him, at that, and Geralt wants to—to _strangle him_. He could’ve died. They still could die. His life should not rely on the catchiness of a song with that as a line.

“ _Take it from meeee!_ ” They screech, retreating.

 _“Up on the shore they work all day!_ ” Half the purple, webbed army is in water up to their waists. _“Out in the sun they slave away.”_ They begin to dive, one at a time down their line, in pleasing arches. _“While we devoting, full time to floating! Under the sea,”_ Jaskier finishes. His arm is still linked through Geralt’s. With a motion Geralt can feel through his entire chest, Jaskier gives a final, swinging strum.

It’s magic. It’s ridiculous. It’s—

Their arms are linked. Geralt is fighting the urge to pull Jaskier close, to consume. The exact opposite of the kind of fighting he should be doing. The kind involving… _Feelings_.

“Should we,” Jaskier interrupts Geralt’s breakdown.

“ _Run_ ,” Geralt commands, and despite saying this, hauls him over his shoulder. Between Jaskier’s startled squeak and the splashing of what are maybe drowned dead overcoming the singing spell, he refuses to stop.

* * *

After a few minutes of following Roach’s scent, he thinks to snarl, “where’d you leave Ciri?”

Right next to his ear, Jaskier breathlessly says, “I asked an owl to show her the way to—“

Abruptly, Geralt dumps him on the rocky ground, even though they aren’t far enough from the bank yet. “You entrusted Ciri to a _fucking owl?_ ” He snarls.

“I—“ Jaskier whimpers, looking only slightly indignant about getting thrown on the ground, “it’s a snowy owl? They’re—they’re always good-natured, Geralt!”

“ _THIS ISN’T YOUR DIMENSION!”_ Geralt roars. “Forest animals are not your friends!”

Maybe it’s his volume. Or what just happened, at the riverbank. But despite the wobble to his lip, and the shaking of his hands, Jaskier lifts his chin and says, quiet but firm, “that hardly mattered back there, did it.”

“Don’t,” Geralt warns, roughly. But he can already feel something in him softening, yielding.

“Maybe—maybe you should let me _help_ you. Let anyone help you, Geralt. Maybe you should believe in me for five minutes, when I save your life. Maybe you should stop telling me to go and leave, because I can tell you don’t mean it! I—“ He clenches his lute, his teeth, and triumphantly screams, “ _fuck!_ I’m so angry at you! Let me stay!”

Geralt gets the feeling that’s not quite what the bard wanted to say. Jaskier slaps a hand over his lips, apparently astounded at himself.

“Done?” Geralt grunts. Wordlessly, Jaskier nods. “Jaskier.” The blue eyes lock on his, wide and wary and surprised. “I trust you.”

Geralt trusts no one. Trusting gets people killed. Trusting gets shriveled, blackened, almost non-existent Witcher hearts further broken. Even Ciri isn’t trustworthy, because Ciri accidentally threatens her own life all the time, and that’s what Geralt cares to protect.

Yet he’d meant it, those words. He’d meant them. Shit.

Beaming, Jaskier turns to him, all daisies and moonlight and big blue daydreaming eyes. The thorny vines of the woods have torn at his arms and clothing; there’s rusty mud splatter on his shoes. Somewhere far away is where he comes from, somewhere beautiful that never hurts, and now he’s here. Being chased by drowned dead in the middle of the night and engaging in screaming matches with Witchers.

“I trust you too,” he says, softly. “You’re magnificent, Geralt.”

 _You didn’t have much of a choice_ , Geralt thinks. _It was trust strangers or die_.

Yet behind them, the drowned dead, the striga—perhaps even more monsters than he realized—have bowed to Jaskier’s ridiculous musical whims. Jaskier’s fought none of them, but still he stands. Alive, and victorious, and cheerily aggravating.

Somehow, it’s possible that aligning with a Witcher wasn’t a desperate, piss-poor survival tactic, but rather a _choice_.

“I trust you,” Jaskier repeats, with a great deal more exaggeration. “To get us out of here and to the village edge very, very quickly.”

Geralt’s never forgotten himself in the middle of a fight before. He hopes that fucking snowy owl happened to be flying in the right direction. No—he hopes it’d _listened_.

 _Shit_.

* * *

Three hours later, Ciri is happily ravaging a plate of potatoes from the tavern, and Geralt is not looking Jaskier in the eye. Several monsters cut down, none of them immune to—to whatever strange magic Jaskier has. Is it the lute? Is it his voice? Is it—is it just _him_?

Geralt dismisses the last. Beasts aren’t sentimental over the entirety of a person—no. That’s Geralt, who continues to be soft-hearted despite the entirety of the known world.

Jaskier’s rambles on Andalasia haven’t become unhinged, or even inconsistent. He recognizes certain things in their travels, but not others. Sometimes, he purses his lips like they’re only off by a little bit, a slight change in the balance of a blade while it’s wielded, with no explanation. Geralt spends his days shanking werewolves and all manner of inhuman things with silver, or enchanted weapons. He’d said it, earlier, without thinking. _This isn’t your dimension_. He’s spent more time than he cares to admit, turning it over in his mind. And it makes a chilling amount of sense. They all know there are other universes, out there, ones that used to be easily accessible.

Is it ludicrous, to believe one of the many monsters might still be able to cross dimensions, and drag a singing bard in its wake? Unless the bard _is_ the—

Geralt takes a long drink of his ale. He thought he’d made his peace with harmless, bright Jaskier. The only other option is killing him or abandoning him at the first sign of malice, and—the longer they travel together, the less sure Geralt is that he can.

Patting his arm, Ciri silently offers up a potato, and Geralt eats it off her spoon thoughtlessly. The barmaid at the other end smiles at them. Like they’re a regular village family, out to eat. To offset this, Geralt bares his teeth and juts his head forward, sits so the splatter of drowner blood is still visible running down his neck.

The barmaid looks away. Good.

From his stool, Jaskier is loudly wondering why heroes don’t get coin for every monster they slay, not just ones they were _asked_ to.

“It’s a service,” he’s telling the barkeep, who doesn’t care. Geralt always wants to slam him into something, but now his mind unhelpfully continues down that path, offers up tempting options for what to do _next_.

Jaskier is from another dimension. Andalasia probably smells of—of sugared plums. They probably don’t wager livelihoods on Gwent. Everyone probably links hands and sings of romance all day long, till they sprawl around on beaches watching the perfect sunset.

Geralt grits his teeth. As of today he’s in love with a magical, musical fool, and not even one that belongs here.

 _Shit_ , he thinks, when Jaskier smiles at him before taking the tavern’s makeshift stage.

 _Shit_ , he thinks, when they leave Ciri to bed, and Jaskier spends half an hour running his hands over him while he sings, eyes half-lidded.

“Goodnight,” Jaskier says, and then, with the quickest little contortion of his face, darts in and kisses Geralt on the forehead. “You’re incredible. I’m sorry I…yelled. I was so worried about you, and I should’ve shown it differently. I’m sorry I,” he ducks his head, and he’s smiling. “I’m sorry I got angry.”

 _I was so worried about you_. “Don’t be.”

Geralt goes to bed, and thinks of nothing at all.

* * *

They pass too close to Ovenfurt for Ciri to miss it. He’d ignore the meaningful looks, except Jaskier catches on, and also—also he hasn’t seen Yen in a while.

“She may not be home,” Geralt warns. Yen tends to travel.

“Who?” asks Jaskier.

“She’ll be home,” Ciri insists. Somehow, she’s right. When they arrive, she runs up the stone steps of Yen’s estate, past its cultivated grounds, and flings herself into Yen’s waiting arms with a shriek of her name.

“Hello,” says Yen. “Have you killed a good monster, yet?”

Ciri squeezes her around the middle, and announces, “Geralt got over himself.”

“She managed to not endanger herself enough times in practice,” Geralt corrects. He only realizes, after a brief moment, that crossing the premises has removed Jaskier from his sight entirely, even though he can see the road behind them.

“Go away,” says Ciri regally to him, holding onto Yennefer’s hands and beaming at her.

“Your companion wasn’t invited past the perimeter,” Yen explains. It is not a thorough explanation, but she doesn’t seem inclined to elaborate. She also does not look at Geralt.

“Go _away_ ,” Ciri says more firmly. Against his better judgment, Geralt turns on his heel and moves, until a confused Jaskier appears from thin air before his eyes once more.

“…Ciri?” Jaskier questions.

“With Yen.”

Maybe Ciri’s explained who, precisely, that is, because Jaskier just goes _ooh_ , and nods sagely.

“While Yen and Ciri have their bonding time,” Jaskier says, and only years of training stops Geralt from flinching. Someday, when he drops off Ciri with Yen, they’re going to plan a hostile takeover. He wouldn’t call it _bonding_. “We should explore. There’s so many new and exciting things here. Like—like—“

“A pub,” Geralt supplies.

Jaskier sighs. “I suppose. I was thinking something different.”

“A pub with good venison.”

Jaskier doesn’t respond for a long moment, just propping his hands on his hips and looking off down the road. “Well, what did you do in towns like these before you had Ciri? Before Yen, too, I suppose.”

Geralt considers this. “Visited the whorehouse.”

“Oh, a _whorehouse!_ ” Jaskier sings delightedly, clasping his hands together and spinning on his heel. “How delightful. We should go!” He stops spinning. “…what’s a whorehouse?”

* * *

After a bawdy song and dance number where he learns more about the prostitutes’ personal lives and aspirations than he’d ever done during whole days in bed with them, he and Jaskier end up walking to a pub. He has the feeling Jaskier still does not understand the purpose of a whorehouse. Neither of them had used it as one.

“Three of them are getting _married_ now,” Jaskier trills, a bounce to his step. Geralt knows. He’d reluctantly contributed coin to the collections, not ten minutes ago. “Can you believe there were so many people who had beautiful feelings for each other and weren’t _doing_ anything with them?”

At the pub, Geralt orders something stronger than beer.

* * *

When he can, he leaves Jaskier at the pub, doing a relatively calm performance. None of the other patrons are even attempting group choreography, so—it’s probably fine. Jaskier is half invincible anyway, just out of sheer luck.

It shouldn’t be hard to leave him for a while. The discomfort is just Geralt’s ears adjusting to the new, lower background noise of a place without Jaskier.

He returns to Yen’s estate, and manages to separate her from Ciri with the promise of some grisly ingredient. Humming, she inspects it at her bedroom desk, violet eyes flicking to Geralt’s before she pockets the gift. A brief flare of their combined lust licks up his senses, when she meanders to sit on the bed. But there’s a reason they stopped sleeping together, and it wasn’t a lack of chemistry. Her lust dies out easily, comfortably, along with his own.

“Ciri looks well,” Yen comments, droll, clearly waiting. This lasts about two moments. Neither of them are patient.

“I need a favor,” Geralt grunts.

“Oh?” Yen smiles, all shining and lithe. Cat with the cream. “And when you used to always want me in your debt.” Geralt rolls his eyes skyward. “Ask me your favor, witcher.”

“ _Him_.”

“You’ll have to be more specific.”

“I _know_ you’ve _watched_ us, Yen,” Geralt says, simply but darkly.

“Yes, fine,” she acknowledges, easy. “Your little bard.”

“He’s not of this world,” Geralt growls. “Send him back.”

“This isn’t one of your monsters,” Yen replies, suddenly sharp.

Geralt bares his teeth at her. “Another. World. He doesn’t _belong_ here. Send. Him. Back.”

“My magic serves _me_ ,” she reminds him, drawing up her shoulders to look him in the eye. “I’ll send him back if _I_ so choose, Geralt, and I have no reason.”

“What do you want?” He asks. “Gold? Owing you a favor in return?”

“He inspires no fear,” Yen muses, and doesn’t answer his question. “In fact, it seems he’s saved your skin a number of times. Why so eager to have him gone? What threat does he hold for you and your little child surprise?”

“Don’t,” Geralt warns darkly. “Yen.”

“No,” she realizes at once, snapping her perfect fingers, turning those violet eyes on him. Circling. A playful predator. “Oh, _Geralt_. This is so very poetic. A threat to your heart?”

“Fuck.”

“Don’t look so distressed. Do you think me jealous? I’ve learned I can be important to you in ways that don’t make us lovers, Witcher. And this? This is one of them. I can prevent you from making a mistake. Like I did with Ciri, when I had you take her in.” She approaches, puts elegant hands on his shoulders. Despite the violence she’s witnessed done to his person in the past, the things she’s done herself, the squeeze is gentle. “I can tell he’s special to you.”

Geralt grunts.

“I think I should meet him,” she says, sly smile growing. “I should meet him, and see what all this excitement is about. I can tell he’s got some excellent brand of magic, apparently unlike both mine and yours.”

“He sings,” Geralt groans. “Melitele’s tits, the _singing_.”

“Is that what does it for you? Really? Here I was, screaming and moaning and putting on my best corset for you.”

Geralt sighs. Yennefer is already half gone. When he wanders to her kitchens, as expected, Yen’s cook is spoiling Ciri rotten.

“Pastries!” Ciri announces, biting into one that proceeds to drip gooey jam onto Yen’s glistening counters. Then, more seriously, “the good kind, like Cintra has close to festivals.”

Sometimes, when their situation is particularly dire, Ciri gets tough, week-old bread rinds for dinner. “Pack some for the road,” he tells her, and her sigh is not nearly as disdainful as it could be. “If we don’t return soon, Jaskier will find trouble.”

With a pointed bite, she swings her bag onto her shoulder. Ciri disagrees: “nowadays you only seem to find trouble together.”

Geralt could say a lot of things, in response to that. _We’re always together, and always in trouble, so how would one tell? He wouldn’t leave unless I forced him out at swordpoint; he’s the trouble, and we both found him, but we don’t want him to leave._ None of these refute anything Yen’s implied. None avoid the truth.

“Maybe you’re the one inviting trouble,” he says instead, ruffling her hair until she scowls at him and wriggles from beneath his palm, shoving the last bite of pastry in.

“Where’s Yen?” She manages, through her full mouth, etiquette about as soggy and mashed as the food Geralt can see. Luckily, Geralt cares little for etiquette. Or her grandmother’s positive opinion.

“Inviting trouble,” Geralt grunts, and then they’re off.

* * *

By the time Geralt manages to make it back to the tavern where he left Jaskier, the worst has already come to pass. Beside him, Ciri beams at the sight of Jaskier and Yennefer, _together_.

“This!” Jaskier is—eerily bright. “Geralt, you didn’t tell me this brilliant lady was joining us.”

“He’s a _flatterer_ ,” Yen says, and runs one hand through Jaskier’s hair. Dangerously. Geralt groans and rolls his eyes.

“Oh, she’s simply lovely,” Jaskier says. Yen pushes on his hair so hard, he startles and rolls his head back. Undeterred, he continues, “the most beautiful woman in all the lands! Does she know how much you adore her? Do you tell her she smells of adventure and intrigue and lilies and lilacs and fresh-cut grass sprinkled with dew—“

“She smells of ozone and ashes,” Geralt snaps.

“We coupled on a bear rug once,” Yen recalls fondly. Ciri makes gagging noises of youthful disapproval. “In front of a fire. Sweaty. I don’t think that’s what true love smells of.”

Jaskier continues to smile at them, but it’s a little strained. “Surely, fairies blessed her as a tiny babe to become this…” He flaps a hand in her general direction. “Sexy.”

“He makes coin with his lyricism,” Geralt tells Yennefer, who snorts. At least she’s not going after Jaskier for his commentary. Yen has—calmed. Geralt isn’t certain exactly why, but he’s pleased for her.

“Hey!” Jaskier protests, but it’s more of a pout than anything.

“You’re reaching,” Yennefer informs him. “It’s alright,” she sighs, “I’m a sorceress. I’m meant to be intimidating.”

This, of all things, has Jaskier bolting up. Yen’s grasping hands are somehow dislodged.

“An—an _Evil_ _Sorceress_?”

“If you imply she’s incapable of a single thing,” Geralt tells him. “She’ll become one.”

Yen smiles at him, all teeth. “Don’t _scare_ him. Never fear, bard. I’ve no need for any human body parts for spells today.”

“But Geralt’s a True Hero,” he seems to be slowly, slowly working his way through a thought. “And you’re… more than friends…”

“ _Inside_ each other friends,” Yen helpfully guides.

“Geralt and I are chamomile-bottom friends!” Jaskier says cheerily, clearly and immediately derailing from his previous thoughts. For his own dignity, Geralt _hmms_ him back onto topic.

“Hoo, yes, ah, so…if not an Evil Sorceress, you must be…” He brightens. “You must be a Good Witch! Oh, Good Witch, you have to help me. I’m being chased after by the most awful of Beings. An Evil One. He’s going to eat me whole if he catches me, oh, Yennefer, please!”

“Why would anyone be after your sunshine self?”

There is a very suspicious silence. Jaskier pokes at his lute.

“What did you do,” Geralt questions, flat.

“I may have composed a ballad about him,” Jaskier admits, “that he didn’t care for? But he was mean to my squirrel friend! My _friend_ , Geralt—”

“I’ll see if there’s another interdimensional traveler,” Yennefer tells him, an aside, as Jaskier goes on between them, something about _it was his oak tree_ and _a mean, mean man!_ “Don’t worry. We’ll get your precious little bard safe. But, as with all things, there is a price.”

Geralt grits his teeth. It’s unlike Yen to charge him for this, but he can’t pretend to be shocked.

“What can I give you?”

She gives him a dry look, runs her hand once more through the fluff of Jaskier’s hair. “ _You_? I think not. Jaskier.”

“He’s not your type,” Geralt promises her.

“I’m everyone’s type,” Jaskier says cheerfully. “And everyone is mine.”

Geralt does not need to be reminded of this at the moment. “Yennefer.”

“Oh, I think you’d be surprised by the breadth of my type. Even if you shouldn’t be. But—no. Jaskier.” He looks up at her, smiles again. “I tire. Sing me a song to lift my spirits?”

Practically floating to his feet, Jaskier raises his lute.

Ciri nudges close, whispers, “you didn’t need to ask as a payment. If you just waited a while, or gave a subtle sign, he’d do it.”

“Like breathing,” Geralt confirms. “Blinking. Or begging for the release of death.”

Jaskier swings a leg up loudly onto a nearby barrel, and Geralt really didn’t need to see his knees splayed at that angle. “A song for my new friend,” he says. “Arguably already my _best_ friend.” Apparently, the only thing he’s absorbed so far from this dimension is how to complain, and from his own dimension retained being annoyingly attractive.

“How could I possibly steal our Witcher’s fame,” Yen says. “No. Sing of Geralt—and none of this adventuring heroism. Surely you have something more tender? More embarrassing?”

“Of course!” The song begins jauntily, and is very pointed. “ _There’s something sweet_ ,” Jaskier begins, low, _“and almost kind. But he was mean, and he was coarse, and unrefined!_ ” He smiles at Yen, the growing crowd of onlookers. “ _But now he’s dear, and so—unsure. You’ll wonder why you didn’t see it there before_.”

The song continues, much higher than Geralt would have expected. It takes him a moment to realize that someone else is singing. Clear, and surprisingly soft—it’s _Yen_.

“ _He glanced your way, I know I saw, and when you touched you didn’t shudder at—_ “ The singing is cut off. This is probably because Yen has hurled herself through a newly made portal. Surprisingly, Jaskier’s strumming just tapers off. Luckily, the song seems to have dazed the onlookers enough to ignore her distortion. They begin to wander off, humming beneath their breath.

“Does she do this often?” He asks, seeming concerned. Another portal opens beside him, and Yen stumbles through.

“What the _hell_ ,” she says.

“Happens to everyone,” Geralt says, just to infuriate her. Not many elements of their fiery romantic relationship have crossed over into their current friendship, but this remains.

“Everyone except Geralt,” Ciri adds, and Geralt couldn’t have done a better job of making Yen’s lip curl.

“I’m not everyone!” Yen snaps. “You are _something_ , bard. How do you do that, anyway?”

“Do… what,” Jaskier blinks. “The singing? Everyone sings—“

“ _No_ ,” Yen, Geralt, and Ciri chorus, with varying degrees of exhaustion.

“You made me,” Yen adds, narrowing violet eyes dangerously. “And no one makes me do _anything._ ”

Jaskier strums, once, absently. “I just play. What you sing comes from,” he pauses, dramatically. “Your heart.” He brightens. “Now that you’ve returned, would you like to try again?”

“I’ll restring your lute with your pubic hair,” Yen threatens casually.

There’s a long moment. “Your lady love is in a poor mood,” Jaskier whispers to Geralt finally. “Did you give her cause to doubt your devotion?”

“Call me his lady love again,” Yen says, “and you’ll wish hair is all I’d removed from down there.”

Jaskier nods rapidly, clutching his lute to his front, very low. When Yen turns, he whispers frantically to Geralt, “I’d recommend _flowers_. Or—or wear something purple. To match her eyes.”

At that suggestion, Ciri laughs so hard she falls off her barstool. Geralt takes a long drag of his ale, and doesn’t correct the assumption.

* * *

They are on the road for an entire cycle of the moon, before he and Ciri realize.

“Your mother,” Jaskier keeps saying, offhand, even tossing her into a song or two. He writes songs about Ciri, too; lavishes praise on her that Geralt should discourage, but can’t bring himself to. It’s not necessarily bad, to have some level of public awareness. It certainly makes the coin easier to come by. And—it’s Ciri’s mother. She’s a person, who lived—who was strong. Ciri remembers her. Geralt remembers her. They both assume someone spilled some details of the story. And then:

“Yennefer said no mandrake,” Ciri frowns.

“Yennefer takes unnecessary risks for the sake of speed and power. Years of training allows her to get away with it unscathed.”

“Do I not have skill,” Ciri protests, obtuse, but she’s already putting the mandrake in. “How old do I have to be, then, before you’ll allow it?”

“Two hundred,” Geralt invents instantly. “Maybe by then you’ll have developed sense. Or skill.”

“ _You’re_ two hundred,” Ciri snaps, even if she sounds uncertain. She has no idea. Geralt hasn’t wanted to tell her—she knows he’s old. She doesn’t know how old. Jaskier doesn’t, either. In fact, they’ve had no discussion on… Geralt doesn’t care to think about it. What the eyes and fighting and monsters don’t manage to distinguish between him and regular men, his age always accomplishes. Jaskier is human. …probably.

Jaskier, who has been reading a poetry book he collected from some starry-eyed dancer in the last town, looks up and smiles at them.

“Encouraging a girl to not listen to her mother,” he says. “That’s risky, Geralt.”

Ciri sets down the mandrake. “My mother?”

“Your mother,” Jaskier nods. When that gets no reply, he sing-songs, “your mother? Creator? Giver of life?”

Neither Geralt nor Ciri speaks. Until:

“You think Yennefer’s my _mother_?”

Geralt has no interest in watching Cintra’s lion cub roar about her heritage or the wonderful nobility of her grandmother. There’s also a chance that, at any moment, Yen could portal in and hear a sliver of this conversation. That— has to be avoided. At any cost.

“Yennefer is barren,” Geralt says. Simple and quick and clean. “Unwillingly. If you speak of this again I’m not responsible for what happens to you.”

“I—“ Jaskier blinks, looking half dazed. “Noted. Then…” His blue eyes are misting. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

“She’s not here,” Geralt says. “…I don’t think. It’s hard to be sure.” If there’s a talent for showing up at inopportune times just to misdirect his life, both Jaskier and Yen have it.

Jaskier is nodding up and down rapidly. “Of—of course. She’s with you, both of you. Forever, in—in here.” He taps one fist gently above his left breast, and it takes this declaration for Geralt to realize they are not having the same discussion.

“My _mother_ ,” Ciri is squawking, half resistant and half intrigued. “Yennefer! She’s so—do you think I’m like her?”

“ _No_ ,” both Jaskier and Geralt say, with varying levels of horror. Geralt thinks Ciri is too much like Yennefer, sometimes, but it wouldn’t do well to encourage it. Stubborn, independence-seeking resolve and magnetism are Yen’s best traits and downfalls.

Ciri’s resulting nose scrunch clearly asks the pertinent question: _then why did you think I was her daughter?_

“She’s, you know,” Jaskier waves his hand through the air a few times, grand. Neither of them choose to rescue him. “The person Geralt cares for the most?”

A scowl. Then, very seriously, “that’s _me_.”

“Well, yes,” Jaskier concedes, laughing. “That goes without saying.” What’s this warmth behind Geralt’s collarbone? Ah, yes. Happiness. It practically itches. Geralt grits his teeth and ignores it.

“We don’t look anything alike,” Ciri dismisses.

“I figured you took after Geralt,” Jaskier explains, gesturing becoming more frantic and sweeping. “The hair, the love of stabby weapons and tromping through the forest, the—oh, oh, the look you’re giving me right now!” He’s pointing, with both hands.

Geralt knows what look his child surprise is giving without looking, because it’s the only rational response. In a tone Jaskier should recognize by now, Ciri says:

“You think Geralt’s my _father_?”

This is why Geralt hates conversation. It always goes in circles.

* * *

Once, Geralt used to sleep peacefully through the night, fearing only bandits or monsters fool enough to try and attack a Witcher’s camp. Good times.

Now, a small finger pokes him in the cheek, and he knows without opening a single golden eye who it is. There’ll be no peace tonight. Resigned to his fate, Geralt doesn’t even bother rolling to his feet and pulling his blades.

“What,” he grunts.

“Jaskier thought you were my father.”

“Jaskier’s thoughts are not a shining example of cunning or wit.”

The finger pokes again. “He’s smarter than we believed.” She hears the incoming _that means very little_ , and scolds, “don’t be mean.”

Geralt compromises, and opens his eyes. If she wants something, she has to tell him. They’ve learned that much about each other. He wonders, vaguely, if it’s a snack for her rumbling stomach, or cobbling on her shoes. He’ll fix her shoes in the next town regardless of whether she complains or not; it’s been too long.

In the pale moonlight, Ciri’s eyes are still summer-green. “Papa died when I was five. Eist was like— a grandfather. He snuck me sweets and taught me, but never scolded me, and he traveled more than not.”

When she doesn’t continue, or elaborate, on this strange series of thought, Geralt sits up.

“I don’t remember my Papa,” Ciri says, singularly focused on him. “Jaskier said—Jaskier said many of the people from his world lose a parent, or their people. He says you can choose your family, if you’ve lost them.”

Ciri hadn’t gotten to choose. A Witcher had stepped in and _taken_. Half as an ironic jest, even. Maybe that’s what she—

“Jaskier said,” Ciri continues, “that I could pick you as a father. If I wanted.”

There it is, that itch behind his collarbone again. And accompanying it is—anger. So much anger. Jaskier doesn’t understand how this world works, or how he and Ciri fit together, or what it means to be a Witcher. Yet he’ll twirl in, every side of him open and vulnerable, to teach Ciri things like _that_.

“This wasn’t your choice,” is all he can say. She’s a child. Fate laid out a decree that even he abided by. If tomorrow they weren’t bound by the law of surprise, what happened in Cintra, tomorrow she could—

“It wasn’t my choice,” Ciri admits, scooting in closer. “But it is now.”

* * *

The weather is unseasonably cold. This is why it’s normal for Geralt to help his child surprise roll up into a wrap of blankets next to him, and lay one hand atop her frizzy head whilst she sleeps. It has nothing to do with _family_ , or _choice_.

Unlike Ciri, Jaskier snaps about three sticks beneath his stumbling feet on the way over to them. There may even be the twang of a lute string. Ciri doesn’t wake. Disgruntled, Geralt wonders if he’ll ever manage to sleep again.

“Hi,” Jaskier whispers unnecessarily. “Did it go okay?” Geralt _hmphs_ at him. “That’s good. Look, I’ll leave you to your sweet dreams, I just—Ciri isn’t Yennefer’s.”

They’d already spent an hour on the road establishing this. Geralt wants to _sleep_. “No.”

“And she’s not of your… loins.”

“No, Jaskier.”

“But,” there’s a strange little hiccupping sound. “But you and Yennefer’s loins—“

“ _Get to your point_ ,” Geralt intones, ready to lunge violently at the next direction he hears the word _loins_ coming from, and that’s when Jaskier bursts.

“Yennefer’s your True Love, isn’t she?”

Geralt’s exhausted brain takes a moment to work through this line of logic. He stares at Jaskier. Beneath his calloused hand, Ciri shifts in her sleep a little, hair soft. It’s the only thing that feels real.

 _I loved Yennefer_ , Geralt could say, even though he won’t. He still loves Yennefer, in a way, but not—like that, anymore. Both of them have moved past unstoppable lust, and frantic, lose-yourself love, and found that the highest, most balanced way they could view each other was as _friends_. There is no way to explain this to Jaskier briefly.

“Even if true love wasn’t just another one of your fables,” Geralt says, “that wouldn’t be what Yen and I have.” Something in the tight shadow of Jaskier’s shoulders seems to release. The bard doesn’t know that Geralt can see in the dark like it’s only the beginning of dusk. The bard doesn’t know he can see the way he bites his lip, clasps his hands together in front of him a few times, looking right at Geralt. “Thinking about the love lives of others keeps you awake at night?”

“Love makes life worth living,” Jaskier protests, too genuine by far. “All kinds of love. Anyway! For now I’ve had my fill of, ah… loins. Just stuffed to the brim with them.” Geralt knows Jaskier doesn’t think about half the sentences coming out of his mouth, but it’ll be the death of them both. “I’ll just pop back over to my own cold little piece of ground.”

Jaskier has a terrible eye for where to bed down. Geralt has, partially out of sadism and partially out of ulterior motives, started laying Jaskier’s bedroll out atop rocks on days when he is particularly aggravating. So most days. It brings the smallest sense of satisfied peace, and also an unacknowledged hope that—

Jaskier moves his bedroll. When Geralt grunts out a _what in Melitele’s name are you doing_ , Jaskier just sits back on his heels and huffs, “Ciri’s here!”

“Ciri’s my child,” Geralt grunts. It is maybe the first time he’s said it aloud. Maybe even the first time he’s managed to think it.

“It’s cold,” Jaskier complains, and pushes his bedroll closer. Twigs are snapping. Roach is snorting indignantly from where she’s tied.

“You’ll never learn to survive,” Geralt mutters, and gives the top of Ciri’s head a light scratch.

Jaskier has been raised in too much caramelized naïveté to actually express _you’re an idiot_ , but he gives a look that is the kindest, most sarcastic approximation of it. “Geralt, that’s what you’re for. Loving and protecting.”

Witchers are for fighting, and drinking, and fucking.

“Don’t worry,” Jaskier continues. “I have responsibilities, too.”

“Then we’re dead,” Geralt accepts easily in a low grunt.

Frowning, Jaskier pushes his bedroll even closer. “ _My_ responsibilities are to lift your spirits. Let you hear some music. Help you stop, and smell the flowers.”

From this close, Geralt can smell much more than just flowers. Underneath the daisies that always surround Jaskier, there’s more—sweet warm leather. The invigorating damp scent that comes from a rush of wind just before it begins pouring rain. Scents Jaskier’s taken from Ciri and Geralt and made his own—lavender. The tang of metal.

With a last floral puff of air, Jaskier flops onto his bedroll, face inches from Geralt’s own. He sings, throaty and low, “night.”

Geralt closes his eyes, breathes deep, and fails to sleep.

* * *

Something changes, and Geralt’s not certain why. At the next Inn they stop at, Jaskier lingers at his door until Geralt practically shoves him back into his own room so they can both manage some rest. When he bathes after the fight, Jaskier is there, sprinkling more scents and dumping in ludicrous quantities of lush bubbly soaps.

“You’re going to burn my nose,” Geralt grunts, not knowing how else to say it.

“What?”

“I have elevated senses,” Geralt says, because this should be obvious. “I can smell animals in the woods. Open vials from thirty paces. Feelings from people. Most importantly, Jaskier, I can smell a drop of chamomile extract and you’ve used—“

“The bottle,” Jaskier squeaks, dropping said bottle into the tub with a _plop_ and a splash. “Sorry, did you say you can smell _feelings_? Feelings feelings?” He is very shrill.

“What are feelings,” Geralt says, because it amuses him, and because Jaskier’s answering exaggerated scowl is worth it.

“ _You said you can smell feelings_.”

“I can’t smell anything now,” Geralt says flatly, and exits the room to breathe.

Jaskier spends the entirety of their stay in that town not looking Geralt in the eye. When he sings of Geralt’s adventures, the whole village crowds into the little bar—hanging through doorways and draping down windowsills, the enchantment somehow impossibly strong.

At least things return to normal, when they’re on the road. As normal as things get, with a Witcher and his child surprise and a magical bard.

Jaskier composes more. While they walk, or when Ciri and Geralt train, or while they travel, moving his fingers silently in the air and mouthing even when, for stealth, Geralt requests he makes no sound on the road.

And then Ciri asks calmly, as he composes aloud one evening, “is this song for the Duchess?”

The first sharp note Geralt’s ever heard him play rings out, an accident. None of them have spoken of The Duchess, Jaskier’s professed True Love, in— _months._

“Is it because you miss her?” Ciri presses, intent yet casual.

Jaskier twists a peg. “It’s about love.”

Both of them let him get away with that. Ciri switches tack, unfortunately, into: “you flirt everywhere we go, but you never _do_ anything about it.”

“I do plenty,” Jaskier squawks, putting his hands on his hips. “I sing, and we all dance, and—“

“Ciri,” Geralt interrupts. Gods, now he’s—fucking responsible for the sexual education of an impressionable teenager. Vesemir had threatened them to treat whores or anyone else they took to their beds with respect—the subject of how raise a child had understandably never come up, but Geralt imagines he’d been expected to do this with respect, too. “Not every world places the same value on sex.”

“Yennefer said he’s not some blushing virgin,” Ciri says. “He’s a grown man.”

“Is this a monster?” Jaskier asks. “A—virgin, you said?”

“He doesn’t even know what that is,” Geralt says, raising his eyebrows at her.

“Is it a scary monster,” Jaskier wants to know.

“It means you’ve never laid with another,” Ciri says, grinning, like she’s well versed—Geralt knows she isn’t, but at her age people pretend they know everything about the subject—and flounces off to practice with her sword a few paces away.

With all this talk of True Love, and handsome princes and kings, and all the. Singing. Geralt wouldn’t be surprised if Jaskier’s world kept relations to the marriage bed. Or maybe bred like trees, from a distance, while singing and waving.

Jaskier blinks at him. “You have a whole word just for that? _Why_?”

Geralt shrugs one shoulder. “Some people care.”

“Interesting,” Jaskier hums, “well, where I come from, that word’s practically useless.”

And because he is infuriating, Jaskier goes right back to strumming, with no explanation. It would be foolish to waste time thinking about what that could mean. Geralt grits his teeth, and does anyway. For the rest of the evening. Despite any enhancements, and his age, and everything else about him, sometimes Geralt is just a man. A man in love, who sleeps inches from that _delectable smell_ every night, who often thinks with something other than his head.

When Ciri goes to sleep and it still hasn’t stopped, Geralt has to do something. Sharpening his blade, at least, gets his mind off it for a few moments. Jaskier is still composing, drifting between lyrics and melody, and settles between Geralt and the fire. His back to a Witcher, who could kill him. Geralt thinks of baths, and a lack of familiarity with whorehouses, and _that word’s practically useless_ , and breaks.

“Do you know what sex is, or not?”

Jaskier has to set down his lute, he’s laughing so hard. He practically tips into the fire, he’s laughing so much, and Geralt begrudgingly grabs the back of his shirt and pulls him to safety.

“ _Yes_ ,” Jaskier wheezes, finally. “Yes, Geralt, that’s practically all people in my dimension _do_. Our entire culture revolves around romance, so naturally there’s—“ he wheezes again, and Geralt scowls at him. “there’s quite a lot of _that_. It’s so common we don’t even have your,” he flaps a hand, “your ridiculous virgin word, what does that even mean? Do you introduce yourselves like that? Well, I suppose relations aren’t for everyone, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but as a general rule no one cares whether you have and—oh, Geralt, that’s _hilarious_.”

Geralt doesn’t think it’s funny.

“But you haven’t,” Geralt grunts, abrupt. “Here. Unless.”

Jaskier stops laughing. He pulls his knees up, and tucks his chin into them. “Well. No.”

“So you don’t—“

“Oh, no, I _definitely_ do. I have, um, quite a lot. And very enthusiastically, too. I’ve… maybe written songs about it.”

Geralt didn’t need to know _that_.

“But not here,” is all he can seem to say.

Jaskier doesn’t answer right away. The red of the firelight dances across his cheeks, and he uncurls to play his lute, strumming almost to the rabbiting heartbeat in his chest. Jaskier plays the lute for many reasons; one is to calm himself. That’s what Geralt suspects he’s doing now.

“It’s not abnormal,” Geralt says, “to desire others besides a woman you haven’t seen in months, a woman you aren’t promised to.” Who he may never see again. Geralt’s not cruel enough, to say that. Or foolish enough to say it like that could give Geralt a chance.

Biting his lip, Jaskier says, “I _know_. I just—since I’ve been here, and everything is different, I wanted to be different, too.”

“You like your dimension,” Geralt says. Jaskier is always ridiculously true to himself.

“…it’s complicated.” Jaskier hunches. “I love being in love, and love in general, and of course True Love is shining and glorious and good! But, ah. The problem with True Love is that—well. Sometimes, the gentle ladies and sirs of the court fall in True Love with you. And you can feel it, of course! My heart’s sung for them. Every one of them. But every time,” he runs a finger across the strings of the lute, “it’s unfortunately turned out that… they’re already married?”

 _Every time_ , echoes in Geralt’s head, followed by _married. What._

Geralt stops sharpening his blade. Sets it down beside him.

“True love in your world is as fucked as love here.”

“No, no,” Jaskier protests, pressing his lips together. “Of course you can’t ask someone to wait their whole lives for their True Love. Our people adore romance. Of course they could make an innocent mistake, and not realize that—that True Love wasn’t what they had with their intended. So by the time I bring Love around, they don’t want to upend their lives. Yet I kept trying, because surely—surely when my heart sung like that, it had to mean… I thought surely one of them was my real True Love.”

Geralt swallows. “Your Duchess.”

A string is plucked too hard, vibrating sharply. Jaskier wilts, the tiniest bit more.

“Geralt,” he says. “When I first met you, I may have—I did a Terrible Thing.”

“You killed her spouse,” Geralt concludes easily. “You’re on the run.”

“ _What_?” Jaskier boggles from below Geralt. “Wait, what? Does that happen here?” Geralt grunts, noncommittal. “No, I didn’t—I just meant that I _lied_ , Geralt!” He takes in a few tiny, hesitant breaths. “I ran out into the woods, away from court, with my lute because… because she told me what we had was wonderful, and she was sure I was her True Love, but that I wasn’t—enough. I’m but a bard. A—a peasant bard. What am I good for, besides a few evenings? A roll in the hay, a drink, a song?” He strums, once. Whispers, “I didn’t want to seem pathetic to you.”

“You were facedown in the mud when we met,” Geralt reminds him. The bard’s eyes dim, and fuck—fuck this feeling in his chest. Fuck Jaskier’s endless wealth of hope. Fuck his faith in Geralt. “I don’t think you’re pathetic.”

Jaskier’s chin jerks up. “That’s… oddly sweet of you?” His mouth twists. “…how are you going to finish that thought?”

Geralt sighs, scrubs a hand down the rough curve of his jaw. “Anyone transported from a dimension like yours to this… hell,” he grunts, gesturing to his weapons and the dark forest around them, “and lives, and still sings?” And still _believes_ in ridiculous, naïve things like True Love. “There’s strength in that.” He twists his blade in his hands, elects to look at it instead of the bard. “Idiocy, too. But. Strength. Ciri and I can see how readily someone could love you.”

Someone. Someone, like Geralt. Even if Jaskier will never love him back, Geralt has more than the fools in Jaskier’s past, than _the Duchess_. The three of them have hundreds of nights, hands clasped under the stars, chasing down monsters— Jaskier’s definition of a hero.

Those bright eyes are on him. Geralt is regretting the length and depth of his speech already. Abruptly, he stands, coming to sit beside Geralt on the log, their faces even.

“You think I’m _strong_ ,” Jaskier says, voice rising with each word, elation evident. His fingers drum where they’re holding onto his lute. “You think I’m _wonderful._ You like my music—“

Getting up, Geralt stabs his sword into the log Jaskier is sitting on, right between the wide sprawl of Jaskier’s knees. The bard lets out something between a scream and a yelp, falling back onto the moss.

“That sound was good.”

“ _Geralt!_ ”

Across the fire, the pile of blankets where Ciri is sleeping shifts. “What?” She grumbles, somehow still sounding like a young princess woken up in her canopy bed. Geralt goes to tuck the blankets back around her, shoving her back into their warmth. Popping his head over the log, Jaskier grins.

“Nothing, little one. Just discussing how much Geralt appreciates me.” She furrows her brow at him, clearly confused. Luckily, he just follows this with, “want a lullaby?” He receives a sleepy, hummed approval, so he hops over the log, and readies the lute.

Geralt puts a hand on his arm, and warily gazes at the trees around them. Jaskier blinks at him, and then gives a little laugh. “The animals won’t sing unless I ask them to join. Most of them are probably tucked away in their nests by now, anyway.”

“ _Animals_?” Geralt snarls, which is mostly because he imagined any bandits or straggling hunters might conga out of the trees, not—not _spiders_ or rabid squirrels.

“Shh,” Jaskier soothes, nodding down at Ciri, and begins to play.

The closest Geralt used to get to relaxation was in brothels, or at the top of sunny hillsides with Roach. Once or twice, when he was sated enough on pleasure to forget certain aspects of Yen’s personality, he’d been relaxed with her.

Since traveling with Ciri earlier on, relaxation had become tending the fire while she slept. Or watching her twist a blade or the fabric of space, with a feel approaching familiarity. Even when Geralt was gone, even when the road was rough, it was calming to know she had some semblance of protection. To know she’d be okay, when Geralt was inevitably gone.

Now, nearly every night, he has this. Dinner and laughter and a daughter and music and hands, everywhere. The silly tune Jaskier picks has his shoulders unbunching. He doesn’t even use words, just hums the melody. Weaves his voice in and out with the lute. Simplistic. Haunting. _Warm_.

Like many of his nights now, Jaskier curled up in a bedroll not a pace from him, Geralt sleeps well.

* * *

He awakens, suddenly, to the sound of Yen’s voice.

“That’s so moving,” she says, amused. Though she wouldn’t harm them, Geralt’s hand immediately goes for his sword. Unfortunately, his fingers are tangled up in—

“Whazzit,” Jaskier blurts, jolting awake when his arm’s dragged unceremoniously along with Geralt’s. “Not the bread—whoa! Hello. You’re not Ciri’s—er— _you’re not related to Ciri!”_

Yen quirks her head at him. “No,” she says slowly, like she’s talking to a particularly dull puppy. “Unfortunately it’s only I, the powerful sorceress who’s found a lead on your dimension-traveling friend.”

“I have a lot of friends,” Jaskier says, rubbing his eyes and sitting up. Geralt watched him fucking—fucking befriend three drunken executioners at their last town. Yesterday he charmed a wild fox into letting him scratch behind its ears. Hell, people who have only heard Jaskier’s songs about him now want to be _Geralt’s_ friend, and that’s certainly never happened before. “Why were you looking for one of them?”

Even while fully awake Jaskier hardly counts as functioning, so Geralt supplies, “so you can go home. I asked Yen to do it.”

Their fingers are still linked, but at this, Jaskier pulls them back into his lap. “Home,” he repeats, sounding dazed.

“Your dimension,” Geralt reminds him. “Your hovel.”

“ _Cottage_ ,” Jaskier protests on reflex.

“Your,” Geralt almost says _duchess,_ but then he remembers the evening before, and it’s years of training in being quiet that allows him to not finish the sentence. “…Mm.”

“My what,” Jaskier murmurs, suddenly sounding very tired.

Ciri hasn’t said anything. If any of her training with Geralt has stuck—and Ciri is an apt, almost too-quick learner—she is certainly awake.

“Ciri,” he grunts. She flings off her blanket to sit up and glare at him fiercely. “Ciri.”

“ _No_ ,” she snaps, standing, and then his daughter _runs_.

“That’s your mistake,” Yen says coolly, “balance it,” when he looks to her with a level of desperation he doesn’t give to monsters that are about to gnaw through his leg.

Geralt catches her, as she passes soundlessly over tree roots and fallen branches, grabs her wrist. Dagger already out, she slashes—it’s not with intent.

“Always with—“ he begins to remind her, reflexively.

“ _Intent_ ,” Ciri practically yells. “Yes, Geralt, always with intent! You want Jaskier to _leave_? You told Yen to _send him home_?”

“I asked Yen to help him.”

Her jaw sets, stubborn and dangerous. “He’s _ours_.”

“People don’t belong to us, Ciri. Nothing belongs to us.” Certainly not Jaskier. Jaskier of sunlight and daisies and stomping, raucous dances, of solemn melodies in foreign tongues. Who squeezes his hand and smiles at him fondly in the dark, when he doesn’t know that Geralt can see it.

“I belong to you!” Ciri cries, and when he opens his mouth to deny it she screams, just enough to shake the earth a little. “ _I DO_! DON’T SAY I DON’T!”

 _I could pick you as a father_ , she’d said. And he’d been so—so relieved. She’d told him something he hadn’t even known he needed to hear, that he was someone’s.

And Geralt—Geralt hadn’t said it back.

 _You have to tell people you care about them,_ he can hear Jaskier telling him, over the campfire one night, eyes locked on his face. _You’re magnificent at showing, Geralt, but sometimes you just have to tell. Don’t treat us like mind readers._

“You do.” His mouth suddenly dry. “You belong to me. I claim you. You’re my child, and I want you.”

Ciri quiets. She says nothing, for a long moment. “Yes. You belong to me. And Jaskier’s _chosen us_ , now.”

Rubbing a hand over his face, Geralt says quietly, “no, Ciri. He hasn’t had a choice available.”

From the blaze in her eyes, he can tell she doesn’t agree.

“Geralt,” she ventures. “Jaskier can make a striga sing. I’ve watched him grow a tree from a seed with a _song_ and feed us its fruit for dessert.” Geralt hadn’t seen _that_. “I think if Jaskier wanted to find someone, he could. Hell, I think if Jaskier wanted to,” she takes a breath, “if he wanted to travel dimensions himself he could pull out his lute and—“

They don’t know that.

She takes in a breath. “I haven’t told him,” she said. “That someday, with my blood and heritage, I might be able to travel dimensions, to take him…”

Even with how they love him, they both hesitate to tell him about Ciri. There’s so much even they don’t know.

“Let him make the choice,” Geralt says. “Let him make it now.”

Neither of them says another word, but they head back to where they’d made camp. Jaskier and Yennefer are equally silent, eyes on them both as they approach.

It’s too quiet. “You’re not singing,” Ciri accuses. It’s a valid point.

“No,” Jaskier agrees, “I’m not. I’ve been… thinking.”

“No, you haven’t,” Geralt says, with a fond but cutting look, forgetting himself. Forgetting that they’re –fighting. Maybe. Geralt doesn’t know. Jaskier doesn’t look angry. It’s very obvious, when he’s angry.

Jaskier just shrugs a little, rolling one hand around in the air, conceding the point with a nod.

“Do you all just stand around gesturing at one another,” Yennefer mutters, sounding bored. “Talking about how you’re _not_ _doing_ anything? This is why I don’t travel with you. I have _so much I could be doing_. For example—and let me be clear, I am only elaborating on what I said earlier—I’ve found a lead. At a ball, in three days. I could be hunting down a _dimensional traveler_ at a _masquerade ball_.”

 _Let this give him the choice_ , Geralt thinks.

“A ball,” Jaskier repeats, eyes going bright and dreamy in that way he only gets after playing his lute by the fire all night, tucked between Geralt’s boots and knees while he sharpens his weapons. “I _love_ balls.”

“We know,” Yen says. “All kinds of them.”

“I think,” Jaskier says, ignoring her, “we should go.”

That’s what Geralt thought.

Lifting her hands, Yennefer summons her power. On the other side of the portal, Geralt can see one of her estates, the one in Caingorn, lavish and waiting.

“Prepare yourselves,” Yennefer warns, violet eyes blazing.

“Um.” Ciri gestures around them. “We still have to pack up camp?”

“Wait,” Jaskier adds slowly, “what are we going to _wear_? All you two have is bloodstained black leather! More importantly: what am I going to _play_?”

Geralt sighs.

“This is why I don’t travel with you,” Yen says, but she smiles.

In three days, at a ball in Caingorn, they’ll search for Jaskier’s way home.

**Author's Note:**

> THANKS FRIENDS  
> CHAPTER THREE IS ER, SOMEDAY  
> WE'LL SEE  
> *backs away rapidly strumming instrument like I'm in the road to El Dorado*


End file.
